Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 07 (of 20)Sumner, Charles
History
Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 07 (of 20)
Sumner, Charles
Slavery -- United States; Speeches, addresses, etc., American
“Rarely has there been such a large audience assembled in
the Cooper Institute,--never one of such general reputation
and intelligence. Several hundred ladies were present. As
Mr. Sumner made his appearance on the platform, he was
hailed with enthusiastic applause.”
The New York _Journal of Commerce_ followed the _Herald_.
“_It was a labored, but concealed, attack on the
Constitution and its framers._ Mr. Sumner did not dare
speak his sentiments fully, and boldly attack Washington
and the illustrious Fathers. He preferred the insidious
course of instilling into the minds of his audience
sentiments of hatred to the Constitution, so that they
might look complacently hereafter on the Abolition
revolution which he contemplates.”
An extract from the _Principia_, at New York, the
organ of Abolitionists insisting always upon the utter
unconstitutionality of Slavery, will suffice on the other side.
“Our readers at a distance will be interested and
encouraged to know that the most radical portions of it
received the most enthusiastic applause from the immense
assemblage, on that occasion, without eliciting the
slightest expression of dissent. This was remarkably true,
even of that portion of it which defended the Abolitionists
from the charge of having caused our present national
troubles, and, on the contrary, gave them ample and due
credit for keeping alive the flame of Freedom by their
opposition to Slavery, and forewarning the country of the
evils it was bringing upon us. To ourselves and a remnant
of our old associates, on the platform and in the meeting,
who remembered the scenes of mob violence in this city in
1833-34, and the attempted renewal of the same riots in
the same Cooper Institute only about two years since, when
Cheever and Phillips were interrupted and threatened, the
contrast was most striking and cheering.”
Correspondents expressed themselves warmly.
Richard Warren, of Plymouth stock, wrote from New York:--
“Congratulating you, Sir, and our country, that the day now
seems not far distant when America is to fulfil the destiny
assigned to her, and be throughout all her borders a land
of freemen without slaves, and honoring you for the labor
you have so well performed in the past and in the present,
I have to express the gratification with which I listened
to your true words on Wednesday last in this city, and to
subscribe myself as one who heard you at Plymouth,[239] and
who always hears you when opportunity offers.”
Richard J. Hinton, the courageous and liberal journalist, was
moved to write from Kansas:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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